


A Prince Without Parol

by TheCopperhead



Series: Ꮥᴇvᴇʀᴜs Ꮥɴᴀᴘᴇ [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Creation of The Half-Blood Prince, Gen, Loss of Parent(s), Marauders' Era, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-07
Updated: 2017-02-07
Packaged: 2018-09-18 23:57:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9408374
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheCopperhead/pseuds/TheCopperhead
Summary: Severus Snape wasn't much of a ordinary student during his time in Hogwarts. He was consistently silent about his miserable life outside the old castle's walls and never shared a story or memory with his fellow students, but so much do we know; he was a prince.





	

Sharply, and ever so coldly, the breeze of an imminent tempest floated in the air, echoing through the unsheltered residence of the myriad magicians’ owls. The wind blew through the wizard’s raven, greasy hair with relentless bleakness, sweeping across the ground and churning straw, regurgitated bones of rodents and clumps of their grayish fur. The tower was perpetually squalid, the stone walls of the area covered with ancient and fresh droppings. Glassless windows lined the walls of the lofty architecture, ranging from cramped notches to one metres high holes, with a few shapeless ones scattered in between. The details of this construction style were of no interest to the Slytherin, the desire for true knowledge gnawing and consuming his thoughts and even his actions over the whole time. This obsession converted his mind into a alveary, one that most wizards and witches would be jealous of. Currently, the cunning wizard abutted against an broad column, his attire copy of Advanced Potion-Making engaging his attention.

Shutting the book with a stentorian whoomph, Severus Snape exhaled a warm breath into the icy air of wintertime, regarding the handwritten lines of an memorandum which he had hidden inside the collection of recipes and his improvements to them. The Ministry of Magic had learned of the finalisation of the student's unfortunate domestic situation a week ago and had initiated vain investigations of the demise of a diseased witch, regarding the issue as canvassed by sending a validating letter to the last member of the family. Everybody was gone, everyone except of the almost full-aged son, who remained silent about the veiled subject as if it had never occurred— as if he'd never been involved. 

     _’We profoundly regret your grievous loss.’_  

Severus huffed in barely suppressed anger about such hypocritical verbiage, a hint of color sneaking its way upon his pallid visage as anger boiled inside him, rushing through the wizard’s inflamed veins. The crackling of paper became audible a second later, fingers crumpling the ministry's letter in his palm. Duplicitous and insincere; those were the words which he would primary use to describe this organization. A grievous loss, of course. They had absolutely no idea.

There was no trace left of the existence of Eileen Snape, nothing except of a short reference in a long forgotten pedigree, if such a thing exists indeed and if her name hadn't been obliterated already. Severus wouldn't earnestly care, intuiting that a close connection with the perished and stained 'Prince' bloodline would merely complicate his already existent difficulties in regard of acquiring a certain social position. His true heritage had remained a secret over all these years, his sorting into the Slytherin house and natural gift for the Dark Arts simplifying it for fellow students to mark Snape down as a pure-blood without asking a question about his family and home. He couldn't exactly claim to be ashamed of his maternal legacy, yet he was and the reasons were stemming merely from his mother's unwise decision of engaging with a Muggle and renouncing her position as a once powerful family's heir without doubt back then, throwing away her entire life. 

Tapping the soles of his battered shoes against the stone beneath him, Severus straightened his posture abruptly, striding towards the thick railing of the tower and resting a sallow hand on the perishing metal, gaze roaming around the wintery landscape and spectacular view on the tremendous, snow-limned castle. With his book stuffed into his robe's pocket, scrawny digits grasping merely the letter that fluttered faintly in the cold wind, Snape took in the calming sight, unbothered by the wisps of his lank, black hair wafting across his sunken-cheeked visage. Hogwarts was the place which the gaunt wizard had always lingered after during both his early childhood and the repetitive, endless summers of enduring a poor and absolutely dysfunctional family. It was a place full of magic and fascinating possibilities and secrets, somewhere safe to escape to and to desperately leave the miserable life underneath the primitive, non-magical people behind.

The ingenious Slytherin naturally hadn't shed a tear when his violent father disappeared during a rainy night three years ago after yet another unraveling quarrel between the unhappily married couple, never returning to the sordid home and raising a hand against mother and son. Instead of grieving and praying to a valueless god, Severus had secretly imagined the corpse of Tobias rotting underneath a forgotten bridge near the river with one of the man's beloved beer bottles stuffed into his hoarse throat; the image came into his vitriolic mind whenever he had laid down and curled up to sleep, almost thinking of his sustained nescience as a real pity. It wasn't the same with his mother, though. She, despite her prior mistakes, had chosen to do her best for her child, he knew that. Eileen had spoken to him about the wizarding world and used every possible minute to pass on a bit of her own knowledge, also scantily but still treating his physical and psychic wounds after almost each of the husband's many tantrums. She hadn't been able and strong enough to change the circumstances for neither her own or her son's good, but she had tried to endure life's horrors together with him.

   A grievous loss. Damn it. Damn them all.

Severus often wished to forget about his father. The lost adult's entire existence meant nothing at all to him, acting merely as another prove of the Muggles' abominably nature, just like his former best friend's despicable sister. His mother, however, having fought for the two of them when the young boy couldn’t; she shouldn’t and wouldn't be forgotten. Should the ministry erase her name from all registration lists, should the teachers and the headmaster feign sympathy and straightaway discuss his tutelage and whereabouts for the ensuing holidays, which the young wizard would spend with 'friends' anyway to prepare for his duties after graduation next year. Severus didn't cared. Just let the devil take it all, but _he_ wouldn't simply forget his mother.

His reflexes were quick, implementing his strangely impulsive intention with precise lethality, a quality which made him such a worthy recruitment for the growing consolidation of pure-bloods and their vicious leader. Slender digits, which normally led a tattered quill and elegant, noir wand with forceful and rapid motions, were ripping the premium, beige fabric of the ministry’s document into pieces and the pieces into even smaller pieces over and over again. With a obscenely indignant growl, the intensity of revealed emotion being utterly untypical for this introverted and silently suffering individual, Severus winded up with his entire arm, throwing the torn-apart paper into the deep abyss that surrounded the large tower almost entirely, the glacial breeze of the storm catching a myriad number of pieces and carrying them away. The paper soon melted with the crystalline snowflakes as distance was increased, vanishing completely from Snape’s view within seconds after thick clouds of breath nebulized his sight.

Severus was instantly coerced into calming down, frigid air being sucked agitatedly into his lungs in this outburst of rage, promptly making him cough against the back of his raised hand. The wizard's noir hues began to water in the same moment, suppressed tears soon leaking over the dark circles under his eyes and running down his cheeks's wan skin until they dripped onto the stone railing and froze. He wanted to scream and shout, cast curses onto alleged delinquents and release all of this stinging anger into the world, but every sound that emitted from him, whilst his eyes stubbornly fixed a devoid spot in the whiteness of the storm, were quiet and pathetic sniffs. If he'd only knew where to start, how to pay his respect and create an always abiding memory of Eileen. Luckily, the idea of an elaborated and secret tribute soon took shape and manifested in the crafty Slytherin’s mind, supplanting the mixture of shame, desperation and anger about himself.

Acting almost as if in inexistent hast, Severus dashed down the iced and circular flight of stairs and soon left the old tower behind whilst making his way back towards the castle and down into the eerie dungeons. The Slytherins’ sombre common room was rather empty and quiet as he entered it only a short while later, small groups of people gathering together in different corners for their silent conversations. A glimpse of Severus’ black hues around the winding, in silvery and greenish colors decorated room couldn’t spot a single witch or wizard with some sort of direct or distant association to him, nor did his vigilant eyes caught sight of another fierce candidate for the so-called 'Death Eaters', who was eager to prove himself worthy of affinity by all available means to receive the greatest dark wizard's mark; a emblem that would very soon decorate the pale sixth-year's forearm, too. It was rather a serendipity than stroke of fate, viewed in this sight, that his mother didn't had to witness her son choosing this dark, dangerous path. It was merely a matter of weeks anymore and there was no backing out of it, not a chance of showing aversion without experiencing the severe and lethal consequences. The revelation of a filthy Muggle’s blood running through his veins, though, would relieve him of any future choices and duties, presumably fasting-forwards to his final end immediately.

He didn't felt a desire for such a calamity, no, and therefore Severus made use of his secretive manner as he maneuvered his unobtrusive figure through the chthonic room and into a more or less hidden corner, evading every possible coincidence, despite his incredibly talent of bluffing problems out. Severus swiftly lowered himself at a ebony-wooden desk in place, pulling out his most valuable book and reaching for a tattered quill, which turned out to actually be his own. This was the truly cunning Slytherin's spot, after all, and he was certainly depositing some of his less precious belongings at this desk. There was no one of this house who would so utterly fearless to dare it and mess with him— or his friends.

Without a hint of further hesitation, Snape flipped the the book’s yellowed pages, browsing through it in next to no time until the last page was revealed along with its absurd vacancy in comparison to the scrawled rest, the anodyne scent of old paper and almost ancient ink blowing right into his sallow, sunken face. Severus' grip around a shaggy quill tightened as his hand's muscles tensed to dip the sharp tip into a half-emptied ink bottle, letting it then hover right above the top part of the book's blank page, a drop of ink being hazardously dragged downwards by gravity. It didn’t got the chance of ruining Severus’ scheme, though, the secret half-blood lowering it and permitting it to gracefully scratch a aphonicly whispered, oracular thought onto the page.

   "This book. . . is the property of. . ."

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading!


End file.
